He clasped her cheeks and stared into her eyes. “No, cara mia. It should not. There’s nothing in the world that could put a price tag on you. I fell in love with you long before I realized it. I would not change a thing about you, Pia. You have to believe me.”
She nodded and wiped her cheeks, sudden resolution in her movements. “Then I have to tell you something too. And you have to promise that you will tell me what you feel. That whether you get angry or furious or hurt, you will communicate with me. That you won’t just shut me down.”
Heart beating rapidly, he nodded. “Pia, you can tell me anything.”
She drew in a long breath. “I’m pregnant.”
He felt dizzy, as if someone had robbed all the air around them. Questions pounded through him, like flies buzzing, and beneath that, a crushing sense of void in his gut.
This was what Gio had been talking about. Christo, how long had she known? How long had she been hiding the truth? How long would she have kept it a secret?
“It is yours,” she said so softly that his head jerked up.
He gritted his teeth, trying to corral the hurtful things that wanted to get out. “For all my sins, Pia, I never doubted your loyalty, your love.”
The betrayed look in his eyes made Pia wish she could change the circumstances. She had never wanted to be the one who deceived him, never wanted to see that disillusionment in his eyes, but if she had told him, with what she’d learned since about Alyssa… All she had held on to was hope.
He was processing it, she knew, running through the emotions. Breath braced, she waited, hoped he wouldn’t just cut her off again. Even a furious explosion was preferable to him shutting her down.
“How far along are you?”
“Almost ten weeks. I think it happened that first time.”
“I wore a condom.”
“They are not foolproof. Raphael, I know it’s a shock but—”
He stood up, a sudden energy to his movements. “What was the decision you had to make? Things you had to think through?” Whiteness emerged under his skin. “Dio mio, were you just going to leave Italy without telling me, like Lucia did to Gio? Was that my punishment for hurting you, Pia? Is that all your love means?”
Pia wrapped her hands over his shoulders, willing him to look at her. “Raphael, please listen to me. I… I wasn’t going to go anywhere. I would have never left Italy without telling you, even if I wasn’t pregnant.”
His fingers manacled her wrists, emotion tight in his features. “Then why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
“Because if I had told you, you would have insisted on us marrying.”
“Of course I would have. Do you want our child to be illegitimate?”
“I don’t care for that label, seeing as my father carried it his whole life. I love you with everything in me, Raphael. I will love you the rest of my life. But to be married to you knowing that we were together for our child, knowing that you were doing it to protect me and the baby, to be another responsibility to you, it would’ve killed any love I felt for you…” She shuddered. “I couldn’t live like that.”
“What if I had never come back, Pia?”
“After my initial anger faded, I couldn’t help but hope. Gio told me about how Alyssa wasn’t even yours.”
When he cursed, she bade him to look at her. “I was the one who held her first. The one she bonded with, the one who she asks for when she has a hurt. She’s just as much mine as she’s Allegra’s. It doesn’t matter that biologically I’m not her father.”
“The only reason Gio told me, I think, is to give me hope. And he was right. After everything she did to you, that you could love that little girl so much made me hope, Raphael. It told me that I hadn’t made a mistake again. It told me that you could love me. And when Gio told me that you had reconsidered Allegra’s requests, that you had agreed to supervised visits, it made me fall in love with you a little more.”
“I did it after our fight, when I realized how much I had hurt you. Allegra and I hurt each other throughout our marriage. If there was any chance for you to forgive me, to love me again, I realized I needed to be a better man. For you, Pia. You bring out the best in me, cara mia.”